Geotechnical News • March 2016
25
GEOTECHNICAL INSTRUMENTATION NEWS
Introduction by John Dunnicliff, Editor
This is the 85
th
episode of GIN. Four articles this time, together with
two discussions of an article in the previous GIN, and the authors’
closure
The fundamentals of vibration
monitoring - things to consider
During the monitoring course in Italy
last June, Bob Turnbull of Instantel
made an excellent presentation about
vibration monitoring. Here’s a written
version.
Specifications for robotic total
station field work
The previous GIN included an article
by Douglas Roy and Jonathan Stuhl of
GZA GeoEnvironmental
about speci-
fications for robotic total station field
work. Here are two discussions of
the article, by Martin Beth of Soldata
and Joel Volterra of Mueser Rutledge
Consulting Engineers, together with a
closure by the authors.
General role of instrumentation,
and summaries of instruments
that can be considered for help-
ing to provide answers to pos-
sible geotechnical questions.
The previous GIN included an article
about instrumentation for braced exca-
vations, and I said that similar articles
for other project types would follow.
Here’s one about embankments on soft
ground.
Symposia on Field Measure-
ments in Geomechanics
(FMGM).
This episode of GIN includes two
articles by Andrew Ridley of Geo-
technical Observations Ltd. The first
is a report on the Ninth FMGM, held
in Sydney, Australia in September
2015. The second is about the future
of FMGM.
Third International Course on
Geotechnical and Structural
Monitoring - June 2016 – Italy
The Third International Course on
Geotechnical and Structural Monitor-
ing (
.
com) will again be held in the historic
location of Poppi (Tuscany), Italy on
June 7-9, 2016, followed by a field trip
on June 10 to the Poggio Baldi land-
slide monitoring site (
monitoring.com).
During the field trip
more than 20 leading companies will
present their monitoring systems in a
dedicated exhibition area.
To enhance the content on recent
innovations, we’re going to have
three sessions in which registrants and
exhibitors will make professional pre-
sentations about new trends. In each
of these sessions, speakers will make
brief presentations on new trends on
each of the following topics: contact
monitoring, remote monitoring, data
acquisition and management systems.
We also plan on two sessions in which
about ten users will make ten minute
presentations on case histories and
lessons learned.
Closure
Please send an abstract of an article
for GIN to
co.uk—see the guidelines on
www.
geotechnicalnews.com/instrumenta-
tion_news.php
Get a dog up ya! (From a website
about toasts: “Apparently an Austra-
lian expression which really doesn’t
mean anything much at all. Often said
whilst being drunk and yelled at high
volume at the footy”). Being uncertain
about the political correctness of this
toast, I asked an Australian colleague.
He said “GO!”
The fundamentals of vibration monitoring - things to consider
Bob Turnbull
Applications for vibration
monitoring
Vibration monitoring covers a very
wide range of applications. When
you consider that anytime something
moves it creates a vibration, the ques-
tion really becomes, is the vibration
relevant to your application? If we
consider vibration in terms of geotech-
nical and structural monitoring then
we can break the vibration sources
into two broad categories, natural
and man-made vibrations. As we all
know natural sources of vibration
like earthquakes, volcano, landslides,
avalanches and even the weather can
be devastating to people and struc-
